


Little sparks that fly and then land like dynamite

by Deepdarkwaters



Series: Flame Keepers [4]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 10:47:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5245448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a big world to clean up after V-Day. This is Roxy's story, featuring: exhaustion, beautiful villains, inappropriate comments, drawing Eggsy a vagina map because not even a potential mass murderer deserves that sort of lousy service, booby traps straight out of Indiana Jones, things it's probably quite unprofessional to do while wearing glasses, bombs so ridiculous they should have ACME written on the side, Gawain's interrupted night with a gorgeous French redhead, an urgent deathbed promise, and a warning that somebody's spine is going to be ripped from his body if he ever calls her 'good girl' again.</p><p>Or: five times Merlin talks Roxy through a mission, and one time he just wants to talk.</p><p>Companion story to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4629843">Street Sweepers, Night Watchmen, Flame Keepers</a> (Eggsy/Harry) but you don't need to have read that first, this stands alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little sparks that fly and then land like dynamite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cambusmore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cambusmore/gifts).



> Thanks to blewoutthestars, Cambusmore, and the magnificent Kook for beta duties and general cheerleading. Very very appreciated :-) Title is a line from a very persistent earworm I couldn't shake a few months back: [The Incidentals by Alisha's Attic](http://youtu.be/qmJRio72vzU).
> 
> The beautiful artwork is by ataratah! Please leave some love here or [on Tumblr](http://ataratah.tumblr.com)

* * *

**December 2015**

* * *

Roxy's coming up for fifty hours with no sleep and aching so badly for her bed that the imagined scent of clean cotton is almost a hallucination. Then, like the bastards planned it, the phone on the counter rings just as she's reaching out to open the shop door and escape for her first full week off in forever.

"A call for you, Ms Morton," Owain says. At least he has the manners to sound apologetic, which is more than she can say for Daniel when she grits her teeth and lets her breath out slowly, taking the handset and politely saying, "Yes?"

"Lancelot, it's Dan. Bit of an emergency. Percival's last mission went cold but the target's been spotted and you're the closest."

"Where's Perce?"

"Bolivia."

"Of course he is."

"Sorry." He doesn't sound sorry; he sounds like he's eating crisps. "I'm sending the coordinates to the cab."

 _I'm so tired I feel like I'm dreaming_ is what she wants to say. What she actually says is business-like and alert, flipping her tablet case open to bring up the mission details as the download reaches a hundred percent. "On my way."

It's early in the evening and the bar is half-empty when she gets there, enough that going unnoticed until she needs to be seen is a bigger challenge than usual. She gets a drink and taps nonsense into her phone, glancing at the groups and couples through her eyelashes and trying to look inconspicuous.

"Two o'clock." Daniel's voice is quiet in her ear. "Lady in blue."

Roxy turns her head, eyes flicking casually from person to person. Lips barely moving and hidden behind the press of her wine glass, she says, "There are three. Which one?"

"The pretty one."

"How professional you are."

He sounds amused when Roxy fixes her gaze on a statuesque woman with closely cropped dark curls and cheekbones so sharply prominent that they look as if they've been carved from marble. "Not her. The other pretty one."

Then Merlin's voice cuts in, disapproving. "Daniel. Go home, I'll take this. Apologies, Lancelot, he's been on duty sixteen hours and seems to have forgotten how to behave."

"My god, poor Daniel. Sixteen whole hours. How is he still standing."

"Sarcasm noted. You'll be home soon." The overlay on her glasses blinks into life, a green rectangle closing around a blonde woman in blue lace. "There's your target."

"Well, now we know Daniel's type."

"Now we know yours," Merlin says in her ear. Roxy shifts her grip on the glass she's holding in front of her face, casually extending her middle finger until he huffs a quiet little sound of amusement. "I think I preferred it when you were scared of me."

"Scared of an old teddy bear like you? Please. I've got an idea, play along."

She taps her phone again, scrolling through her contacts and dialling Daniel's desk line. Tears come easily, but not the real sort – the fake Hollywood sort, fragile and beautiful, the kind of tears that get rehearsed in front of a mirror. It's a shitty trick she always despised as a teenager, the big wet eyes and crocodile tears the girls at school used to get their own way, as if they weren't all spoiled little princesses anyway. It's different now. It's another tool, as valuable as a loaded gun or the poisoned blade hidden in the toe of her shoe.

"I can't believe you," she says, tight with Oscar-winning fake fury. "This is the last time I'm – it's _over_ , do you understand?"

"I feel as though I'm in Dynasty or something," Merlin says in her ear, and Roxy throws back the rest of her drink until the urge to smile passes, banging the glass back down angrily on the bar.

"No I'm not crying! How dare you think I'd cry over _you_?"

"Come and teach this stuff to the recruits. I'm not sure it'd have quite the same effect coming from me."

"Go to hell," she snaps, and jabs her fingertip viciously at her phone screen to end the call. In her earpiece there's a rattle of applause and a few kidding calls of _brava_ from the other handlers, and she signs _thank you_ where they'll be able to see it reflected in the bar mirror through her glasses, disguising it as swiping dripped tears from her chin, as Merlin's telling them all to settle down and get some work done. She storms out of the bar area right past the target's table, head high and stilettos clicking, and accidentally on purpose lets her silk scarf fall noiselessly onto the floor from where she's draped it loosely over her little diamond handbag.

In the toilets she waits, patiently reapplying her lipstick.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Merlin asks, and Roxy gives her reflection a raised-eyebrow look.

"In my experience it's very, very rare that a woman won't stick up for another woman who just told her shithead boyfriend to go to hell, no matter what kind of dodgy business she's involved in."

That's when the door opens and the target comes in, tall and blonde and a Baywatch sort of beautiful, holding Roxy's paisley scarf. Merlin says in her ear, amused, _well consider me told_.

"You dropped this outside," the woman says, and Roxy fakes surprise as she's putting her lipstick back in her bag.

"Oh my god, thank you! I'd hate to lose this, it's my favourite."

"No worries." The target leans against the counter, conspiratorial sort of smile spreading slowly across her face. "Thought you might've dropped it on purpose if it was a present from whoever you just ripped apart on the phone."

"No, this was from my mum. Although now you come to mention it..." Roxy reaches for her watch. "He got me this last Christmas. I'm throwing it in the sanitary bin."

"Shame. It's nice."

The dart hits her so quickly that she doesn't even have time to flinch.

* * *

**June 2016**

* * *

_Are you seeing this?_ Roxy signs with her hands in front of her face so Merlin can see through her glasses. He doesn't laugh, but then he rarely laughs; the tone of amusement in his voice when he speaks is just as clear.

"Unfortunately, yes I am."

On the bed, Eggsy has his face rammed into the crotch of their target and he's doing something monstrous he probably saw in porn. Roxy is just out of the woman's sightline, watching the laptop screen impatiently as the bomb blueprints transfer onto her thumb drive, status bar ticking far too slowly towards complete, but she can see him going to town and getting it as wrong as it's possible to get anything. The wet sounds of his tongue are excruciating. She's never felt this on edge about a distraction before, positive that any minute now the woman's going to shove him away and draw him a map—

There. A hundred percent. She grabs the drive and pockets it, swapping it for a tiny self-destructing USB gadget to fry the laptop's memory, then silently crawls to the open French doors so she can drop like a cat from the first floor and escape to the car parked around the corner.

"My _god_ ," she spits out when she's closed the door, "that poor woman!"

"That poor woman's planning to threaten half the world with nuclear weapons."

"Well, yes, but nobody deserves that sort of lousy treatment."

The other door opens after a minute and Eggsy slides into the passenger seat looking far too pleased with himself, ostentatiously drying his mouth on the cuff off his jacket until Roxy makes a disgusted noise and finds a pack of makeup wipes in the glovebox to throw at him.

"Distract the target so I can get into her room, not bring the target to her room and have bad sex with her while I'm trying to work."

He makes a big elaborate show of cleaning his face and all his fingers, smirking until she slams her foot down and accelerates away. "She dragged me to her room, woulda been well more suss if I tried to take her somewhere else. And that was brilliant sex, she came like a fucking earthquake."

"No she did not. She faked it to get you away from her."

"Yeah, you're just jealous."

She whirls the wheel and takes the next corner hard, screeching tyres, so Eggsy slams sideways into the door. "Seatbelt, please."

He's laughing as he plugs his belt in. "Merlin, tell her how good I was."

"No thank you, I'm staying well out of this one." A tiny pause. "Although I will say if she wasn't faking, she has a very unusual anatomy to have liked the mess you were making as much as you claim she did."

"Oh my god, harsh!"

"Take your glasses off next time, please. And maybe try a conversation instead of sex if you need a distraction. You're good at conversations."

"Fucksake, what's this, International Gang Up On Eggsy Day?"

"Every failure's a learning opportunity," Merlin says, and now Roxy can't stop laughing, partly at his piss-poor impersonation of Guinevere's voice, partly at the wounded look on Eggsy's face at all the taunting.

"If you're such a fucking genius," he mutters, drawing a dick in the window mist with his fingertip, "why don't you come out here and do all the hard graft and I'll relax in your spinny chair drinking tea and bossing people about?"

He sounds so pathetic that Roxy almost – _almost_ , not quite – feels bad. She starts to reach for the sponge in the door pocket so she can make him clean the window he's defiled, then she reconsiders and brakes the car to a stop at the side of the deserted road.

"Look." She unplugs her seatbelt and leans over the steering wheel, drawing a rapid set of curves and circles with her fingertip in the mist gathering on the windshield. "It's seriously not rocket science. Aim here. _Don't_ aim here. That's where we pee from. Nobody's going to thank you for that."

He's giving her an uncertain sort of look, flickering between her face and the windshield diagram and back again. "Wait, hang on, you pee from the middle bit? Not, like, the sex bit?"

"God give me strength," Merlin mutters, sounding a bit like he's just trodden in someone's sick on the pavement. "Closing the line. I think we're done here." Then there's a bit of a commotion somewhere in the background, hushed frantic voices. "Ah, Lancelot, Dan and Morien just brought out notebooks. I'd suggest taking this conversation to your hotel room if you don't want a round of inappropriately colourful questions when you're back at HQ."

She gives herself a grimacing sort of glare in the rear view mirror so Merlin can see through her glasses how much she likes that idea before he signs off. "Chin up, Eggs," she says as she's belting back in, overly cheerful to cause maximum annoyance because that's the kind of friends they are. "At least you can't get any worse."

* * *

**May 2017**

* * *

"I think you should probably run," Merlin says.

To Roxy's right, there's a worrying low rumble of something moving on the other side of the wall: something huge, rattling, rushing. To her left, Pelleas is tightening the straps holding her crossbow to her back.

"Mo says run."

"Merlin too."

"Well, then," Pelleas says, hard look of determination flickering briefly into a sideways grin, "let's make it a race, yeah?"

She's gone as soon as she words are out, pelting down the carved stone corridor, and Roxy mutters a swear as she takes off after her just a split second later. Pelleas is taller, longer legs for longer strides, but Roxy was a county-level sprinter a million years ago back in school so it's a pretty even match, side by side flying down the straights and overtaking by turn on the corners. Behind them the roar hits a belting crescendo, spilling a rattle of exploded stones like hail, and Roxy hears Merlin's voice in her ear - "Glad you've got a head start on that bit of nonsense" - as she's taking a flying leap over a hole in the floor that's gaping open over fuck knows what sort of cave of horrors below.

"Oi, Galahad," Pelleas yells, "Kay, you still with us?"

"Yeah," Eggsy says over their multiway comms line from somewhere else in the insane labyrinth, breathless and breaking up in a crackle of static, "we're fine and fucking dandy, cuz, except the walls are closing in so give us a minute, yeah?"

"Looking at the map, this is going to get hairy in a moment," Merlin says. He sounds calm - he always sounds calm; even that time Roxy got a poisonous spider bite and started hallucinating hell goblins and psychedelic flying dragons all over her mission he stayed calm - but the rapid tilt of his words when something's wrong always gives him away a tiny bit. "Lancelot, Morien's saying the same to Pelleas - you need to stay on the right, she needs to stay on the left, and you need to do _exactly as we say_ , is that clear?"

She knows better than to question him when he's talking like this. "Yes."

"Even if it splits you up. Even if it sounds like I'm going to get you killed. Clear?"

"Yes." She stumbles slightly at the noisy crash and rumble behind them, steadies herself, flings a quick glance back over her shoulder to see how close the danger is getting, then kind of wishes she hadn't. "I'm never watching Indiana Jones again. How the hell is that thing following us, there's no slope."

"Some kind of engine in it, I think. Don't go any faster, don't slow down, we need you at a constant speed so we can count you in. It'll be three, two, one, action. Clear?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Jump as far forward as you can in... three, two, one, now."

And as she sails through the air, Pelleas doing the same on the other side of the corridor, Roxy sees the stone floor below them tremble as if there's an earthquake and fall away to leave nothing but blackness and a few dozen iron spikes, polished and honed at the tips to gleaming needle sharpness.

"There's a gap coming up, it's narrow but it'll bypass a jump I don't think you'll make. Take a hard right in three, two, one, now."

"Narrow," she gasps, slamming her hip off a bump in the far too close walls, "you don't say."

"You're coming back to the main passageway, turn right and keep going."

"Alright?" Pelleas says when Roxy flies back into step with her. She's flushed and sweating, bright-eyed, face plastered with the mad sort of grin Merlin says they all get when they're neck deep in shit and swimming like hell; Roxy can feel a matching look on her own face, a breathless laugh tearing free as she reaches out her hand and Pelleas slaps her palm. Funny how being scared to death makes you feel so fucking _alive_.

"Alright. You made that jump, then."

"Fucking wheel saws come right up out the floor, three of 'em. Feels like we're in Temple Run."

"Hold your breath," Merlin instructs, moments before a stone gargoyle on the wall blurts out a greenish cloud of gas in their faces, and they do and it burns but they don't stop running, finally breathing in huge sucking gasps as soon as it's safe. The rolling stone ball that was chasing them fell into the chasm below ages ago but there's something else in its place: either the labyrinth has some kind of self-destruct mechanism or Kay and Galahad buggered something up somewhere, but whatever it is, it's collapsing the passage behind them. Between the dusty shock waves of crashing stone gaining on them and the absurd maniacal booby traps waiting ahead, there's barely any room for thought: just instinct, the pinpoint accuracy of following instructions spoken by the only person in the world whom Roxy trusts unreservedly with her life. She leaps across ankle-height swinging swords, ducks under garrotte wires, leaps and rolls and tumbles, swoops sickeningly high across one section of false floor clinging to a rope that's stretching from somewhere so high above that she can't see what it's fixed to.

"Almost there," Merlin says in her ear, as calm and beautifully focused as ever. "Through that door ahead. It's a fourteen-foot drop so mind how you land."

"Do I want to know what's on the other side?" Roxy asks, but then she's at the doorway before he's got time to answer and sailing out into the air, rolling to soften the landing but accidentally getting tangled up with Pelleas who's doing the same.

"Take it easy," Merlin says as Roxy’s trying to scramble free from their tangle of limbs, "you're in the centre of the labyrinth, I suppose a sort of panic room, fortress. This won't collapse."

Even as he's saying it, the doorway they just fell through caves in with the shattering sound and flinty stink of rocks crashing and scraping. Roxy yanks Pelleas out of the way of some falling debris - and then there's silence, weird as hell after the last five minutes of destruction, nothing but ragged breathing and then, starting faintly and building, Pelleas laughing as she unstraps her crossbow.

"What the fuck, what's funny?" Roxy gasps out between great heaves of oxygen, thumping Pelleas hard in the arm and getting one right back, but she can feel it bubbling up in her as well and of course she gets it - nothing has to be funny, it's not that kind of laughter. It's just a sort of gorgeous weightless relief, one that makes her grab for Pelleas' hand and squeeze in solidarity.

"I was just fucking _sure_ we was gonna have to be mopped off the flagstones and delivered back home in a bucket this time, Jesus fucking Christ my heart's going like the bloody clappers."

Roxy can feel it thudding hard against the back of her wrist, and then fuck knows how but suddenly it's thudding against her chest, against the matching mad beat of her own, and Katy's got a mouthful of her tongue. It's quick and inelegant, the press of a thigh and the response of another, a brief battle for dominance and then a shuddering syncopated rhythm, stone floor cold against Roxy’s back where her shirt’s rucked up and then beneath her palms when she twists herself on top, and two swallowed groans of release.

Pelleas recovers first, at least slightly, just enough to smirk - like a horrifying clone of Eggsy, which is _not_ the face Roxy wants lodged in her brain at a time like this, thanks - and say, "We been sharing a hotel room all week and you steam my glasses up on the floor in a villain's lair? What's - oh fuck. Fucking hell. Mo, my love, sorry bout that, yeah?"

Glasses. Roxy almost wishes she'd impaled herself on those spikes after all. "Merlin," she mumbles as she's disentangling and trying to pat her mussed hair back into place and swipe the sweat off her forehead and spit off her mouth. "That was… hideously unprofessional, I'm so sorry."

"Come on, now, we've all seen much worse." He sounds amused, which is probably better than the alternatives - annoyed or disappointed or disgusted - but no less mortifying. "You're not the first. Fairly normal reaction to averted danger, I'd say. I closed the screen and muted the speakers, it wasn't broadcast to the whole department."

"Small mercies."

"Door at your two o'clock is the safe passage out. No saws, no gas, no falling floors. Kay and Galahad are on their way to the Rover from the north side, so if you want to bag the driver's seat before they get there I suggest you make a move."

"Do they have the goods?" she asks, closing her fingers around the little leather pouch in her pocket containing a heap of huge flawless stolen diamonds that could probably buy a sizeable private island somewhere, like maybe something the size of Australia.

"Mission accomplished all round. Now get out of there, go and get some sleep or engage in some other bed-related activity of your choice."

"Merlin, shut up."

* * *

**August 2018**

* * *

Many of the Lancelot candidates were taken from the military, and it showed in the way they worked – they were certainly less concerned than normal people about flinging themselves from planes – but Roxy, pulled from an Oxford DPhil in engineering science, excelled in other areas. In training she made and dismantled bombs as efficiently and calmly as if they were Meccano.

This bomb is not Meccano.

"Huh."

She can't think of anything else to say, but Merlin in her ear replies, "I completely agree," and even now, minutes from being blown to bits by the most complicated bit of machinery she's seen in ages, she feels strangely calm just having him there.

"Any suggestions?" she asks, as the blinking red countdown clock flicks from 6:00 to 5:59.

"Hold on, I'm calling Gawain."

Gawain is Kingsman's bomb expert and the second most senior field agent after Guinevere, a bit of a stickler for the rules, very prim and with manners so flawless that Percival said once, half teasing and half grudgingly impressed, that if you cut him he'd bleed in the shape of a polite apology note. With everything she knows of him, when he answers, sleepy and slow, she's sure for a few seconds that Merlin's misdialled.

"I'm in bed wrapped around the most thrilling French redhead I've ever met, Merlin, this had better be about the impending apocalypse."

Merlin clears his throat, manages with an enviable self-control not to laugh, and says smoothly, "Gawain, Lancelot's on the line. We've got something of a delicate situation."

The slightest hesitation then Gawain's back to normal, alert and speaking rapidly in his plummy Home Counties accent with only the faintest tinge of embarrassment. "Terribly sorry, Lancelot. How may I help?"

"Good evening, Gawain, I'm so sorry to interrupt." Merlin makes a sound that could be a choked laugh and Roxy grins even as the counter flips down and down. "Do you have my visuals?"

"Sending to your tablet, sir."

There's the sound of shifting springs and a noisy snore from, presumably, the thrilling French redhead, then Gawain says, "Yes, thank you, Merlin, loading now – good lord. Ugly little thing, isn't she?" He's got the same tone of delighted wonder in his voice that people use when they're talking about the Sagrada Familia or their newborn baby. "I won't insult your intelligence by asking whether you've tried simply to shoot it dead or remove a few screws as usual. Would you be so kind as to give me a clear view of all the sides?"

"It looks like it should have ACME written across it," Roxy says grumpily as she's twisting about in the narrow ventilation shaft where the bomb's been hidden, trying to get a good look at all the parts. "These bloody villains."

"Hear hear. Although I daresay if they spent as much time on their schemes as they do watching cartoons then our lives would be much more difficult, so I don't like to complain too loudly. Time?"

"Four minutes seventeen."

"Good. Unscrew that panel, please."

There's another snore in her ear as she's working on the tiny screws, and a long low grumbling sort of whine. "Your – lady? Gentleman? Sounds impatient to have you back," Roxy says lightly, dropping the first two screws in her pocket and starting on the third. "Do apologise to them for the inconvenience."

Merlin starts laughing again, soft and muffled like he's trying to stifle it, and the tinge of embarrassment in Gawain's voice becomes a lovely uncharacteristic sort of flustered. "Yes, she's terribly clingy. Separate those tangled wires, please." After a moment he says, "Ah, Lancelot? I was referring to my dog."

She bites down firmly on her lip, wondering exactly what it is about Kingsman that turns its trained killers into such blithering idiots over their pets. She's found herself acting the same way towards Boudicca, particularly when she gets home exhausted after a mission: talking to her as if she's a person, leaving gaps between sentences like she's going to answer.

"Mine spreads herself over my bed like a bearskin rug and leaves me the narrowest sliver of mattress at the side. What's yours?"

"Bloodhound, Jeannie Rousseau. Please cut the red. And yours?"

"Definitely the red?"

"Yes, please. I've encountered this idiot before, I'd know his setup anywhere."

"Alright," she says as she snips. "Boudicca, black standard poodle."

"Beautiful," Gawain says wistfully. "My recruit puppy was an apricot. I loved that boy. Time?"

"Three seven."

"Can you see screws behind the wires? Unfasten those, please. This wily coyote hides the main bomb behind a simple one."

She reaches carefully between the remaining wires and starts removing the screws. "What about you, Merlin? Or is looking after agents enough?"

"You're certainly trickier to toilet train," he says mildly, and Roxy grins. "I don't have time for a dog."

"Cat? Hamster? Budgie?"

"Four cats."

" _Four_ cats, but you don't have time for a dog?"

"Well, cats sort of look after themselves. Dogs are perpetual toddlers."

"Dogs are wonderful," Gawain says indignantly, like Merlin's pet preference is a personal attack on his character. "Lancelot, you can take that entire section away. It's quite safe; the red you cut will slip out, the other wires are only attached to the walls of the removable part. Time?"

"Two forty-four."

"Please give me a good close view of the new wires and where they connect." He's silent for a while, long enough for the clock to tick down to one minute fifty-seven, then says, "Cut the second blue from the top – that'll disable the tilt switches – and then the lowest red to disengage entirely."

"Bit anticlimactic," Roxy says when the clock freezes on one forty-nine then blinks into blackness, and Gawain chuckles in her ear.

"Good. That's what we like in a bomb. Unless it's one we're setting ourselves, of course."

"So sorry to have interrupted your romantic evening."

"It was my pleasure. Goodnight, Lancelot, Merlin." He signs off and Roxy sits there silent for a while against the base of the ventilation shaft wall, only just now realising how badly her palms are sweating.

"Merlin, why the hell wasn't a bomb like this anywhere in the training?"

He's at least got the manners to sound a bit rueful. "It's only very recently that people have started making them like this out in the real world. Hollywood has a lot to answer to. By the way, if you really want to make friends with Gawain you'll wrap that thing up and give it to him for Christmas. We can repurpose the explosives, but he collects dead bombs the way Guinevere collects dead animals."

Roxy starts emptying the main section of her rucksack so there's space to pack the bomb inside. "Sounds like this job turns people mad if they're in it too long."

"I don't like to judge. I'm sure we'll all reach that point eventually. Extreme stress needs very peculiar outlets sometimes."

"What are your four cats called?" she asks lightly, then laughs muffled against the back of her hand at the way Merlin can somehow convey a semi-resentful surrender through nothing but silence.

"Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and—"

"Frida, seriously?"

"M. Bison."

"I'm not even going to ask."

Merlin says, sounding amused, "For the record, my nephew named that one."

"And the others?"

"No, they were me. There's a Frida as well but I donated her to my mother for company when she retired."

"Tell me more about peculiar outlets for extreme stress."

"Your helicopter's ready, Agent Lancelot," he says evasively, and Roxy gives a thumbs up he'll be able to see through her glasses and swings the bagged bomb onto her back so she can go home to sleep, precariously balanced as always on the very edge of the mattress next to the world's most spoiled poodle.

* * *

**March 2019**

* * *

When she wakes it's to the faraway sensation of pain first, dull and heavy in her stomach then sharpening, cutting through the blackness until the rest of her catches up with her nerves and she starts to become aware of her other senses too: the rolling crash of water, a salty ozone tang to the air, the filthy stink of old sweat. When she opens her eyes, bleary and squinting and trying to get her bearings, she sees a scruffy grey stretch of pebbled beach bouncing and lurching with the strides of the guy who's got her slung over his shoulder.

"She's back with us," she hears Dan call. Glasses still working, then. "Hold on, Lancelot, passing you to Merlin."

Hold on. As if she's going anywhere, dangling upside down and pinned in place by some goon's muscle slab of an arm. She wriggles in place, uncomfortable and winded, trying to twist into a position that doesn't leave her whole body weight pressing sickeningly on her solar plexus – then goes stiff and still with white hot fury when the guy slaps her arse and tells her calm down. Killing for a job is just that, a job, but this is one she's going to fucking _relish_ as soon as she breaks his hold on her.

"Lancelot," Merlin says. His voice is low and measured, somehow calming even though he's speaking rapidly, a machine-gun rattle of words. "Your heart rate's off the scale. I know you're angry. Use it. You've fought bigger than him and won."

 _Drugged_ , she signs with both hands where he can see them. _Fine motor skills seem ok. Gross motor skills less ok. Limbs feel like lead._

"Noted. I've got your location, sending backup. Look around for me."

She twists side to side, aching neck protesting every movement: the gritty beach, low scudding clouds, a rusting old tin bucket of a boat alongside a dilapidated jetty sticking out into the steely sea. She can still feel the nauseating sway of the waves, and the acidic stink of sick in the tiny hold where she'd woken up groggy and sore the first time, straining to remember what had gone wrong. Struggling weakly against the man's hold on her, she peers under his arm and sees a long meandering spine of sharp cliffs, strata of black and grey disappearing into the foggy distance up and down the coast, a tower of some sort just visible at the top.

"Weapons?"

 _Stole my watch_ , she signs. _Miracle my glasses are staying on._

"Shoe blade?"

_Snapped off in his friend's spine._

"Guns?"

_Gone. Knife in my boot, can't reach it. Lighters inner pocket._

"Unwise if you can't run."

_I know._

"I know you hate doing this, but—"

Sigh. _You'd never ask Eggsy to do it_. Which isn't fair, really. This is just the fucked up state of the world; society responds to a crying woman differently than to a crying man, even, sometimes, society's absolute dregs. Out loud, a careful note of panic in her trembling voice, tinged with tears: "Where are you taking me?"

She can hear the vicious grin in his voice. "Someplace you can't cause any more trouble."

"I didn't – please, let me go!" Her sobbing sounds loud and harsh on the empty beach, even with the crash of waves hurling themselves against the rocks. "I don't know who you are, I've not done anything – there's been a mistake, I'm nobody, I'm—"

"Yeah, pretty big mistake you made killing Rossi back there."

"Well," Merlin says mildly in her ear, "always worth a try," and Roxy mutters _shit_ and stops crying. "If he wanted to kill you he'd have pushed you overboard, not carried you off the boat. Whatever he's planning, you've got some time."

But maybe not. Another glance under his arm reveals the mouth of a cave, tall and narrow and a black so dark it looks like someone's carved a jagged slice into reality itself. Roxy starts struggling again, forcing her aching limbs to cooperate. "Don't – not in there, please, I'm claustrophobic—"

"Good," Merlin says. He's still so calm. He's sounded more frantic than this looking for a teaspoon in the break room at HQ. "Keep going. Any information you can get from him."

"Tough shit," the guy snaps. He shifts his grip, winding her again as he jostles his shoulder into her belly.

She spent the best summer of her life cave diving in Florida and Mexico. Small spaces aren't a problem. She's always liked the dark, in fact – finds it sort of weirdly comforting, likes the way that taking away one sense forces all of the others to sharpen to a razor's edge – but when the guy leaves her dumped on the floor deep inside the cliff after she lost count of the twists and turns and ups and downs, the darkness is almost a solid thing, like a black thickness to the air. The light of his torch bobs as he padlocks the metal gate and walks away, fading until he climbs enough steps for it to disappear completely, and then there's nothing there but Roxy, her rapid breathing, her wheeling thoughts, and Merlin in her ear.

"Sit tight. Galahad's en route."

"I fucking hate being rescued," she says sullenly. There's no real bite to it; he already knows how she feels about that sort of thing, just as she knows exactly what he'll say back.

"Backup, not rescue. How many of the others have you helped out before?"

She doesn't reply to that, just switches to night vision and starts digging round in all her pockets to take stock of what's been taken and what tools she's got left. A knife tucked into the scabbard on the side of her boot, two lighters – as Merlin said, not much use when she's still too dazed to run from the blast, and even less use this deep into the side of a cliff where the only thing they'll get her is crushed to death – and her glasses, that's it. No watch or phone with all their add-ons, shoe blades broken, guns gone. At least her movements are starting to feel easier. She sits on a low flat rock, back pressed to the damp wall, and starts flexing her hands and feet to hurry things along.

"How far away is he?"

"They're flying from Turkey. Just over two hours."

"Tell Margaret to put her foot down."

"I expect Galahad's already shouting in her face."

She actually laughs at that, she can't help it. "How does she put up with him?"

"The same way you do. Withering looks and occasional dead arms to hide that in fact you find all his bullshit quite amusing. Look around for me again, let's see if we can break you out before he gets there."

She goes to the gate first, crouching so Merlin can see the metal bars, the double padlock – which she could open in two seconds flat if she only had her pick, but it's hidden in her stolen phone – and the steep steps cut roughly into the stone just outside, leading up even higher than the ceiling of the cave to the labyrinth of tunnels. The cave itself is wider than it is high, a wobbly sort of circle about twelve feet across; the ceiling's low enough that if Merlin were here he probably wouldn't be able to stand up fully. She walks the perimeter slowly, showing him the full height of the walls in case there's anything helpful, but every inch looks the same – at least it does until she gets into the shadows of the far side and almost trips over a corpse. She catches her balance against the wall and ducks down to look at it properly, pale dead skin glowing an eerie green in the night vision of her glasses.

"Injuries?" Merlin asks.

"None that I can see." She starts checking his pockets but, like her own, they've been cleared of anything useful, no weapons, no wallet. "Bashed on the head but doesn't look bad enough to have killed him. No decomposition yet, so he can't have been here long. He's obviously not starved to death. Weird position. He didn't lie down like this himself, someone must have put him here. Can you trace him through the facial recognition program?"

"Tricky with night vision but let's see. Carry on around the walls."

By the time Roxy gets back to the rock she started from, the body is the only thing different in the entire cave. She sits down, then stands up again, restless and pacing, kicking hard at the base of the rock and dislodging a crumbling heap of damp sand.

"Lancelot, look down again."

"At what?" She looks down at her feet.

"The place you kicked. It looks wet."

"Yes?"

"I just had an unpleasant thought."

"Oh god, do I want to know?"

"If the sea came far enough into those tunnels it'd stream down those stairs and through the bars fairly quickly."

There's a horrid little clench in her stomach at that. "How long until high tide?"

"But it can't be that." Merlin's speaking in that slow, considering voice he uses when he's thinking out loud, like he's forgotten she's there. "Where would the water go when the tide went out? Wouldn't the cave stay full? Is it draining out somewhere?"

"Merlin?"

"Lancelot, show me the ground."

She starts pacing wall to wall, covering every inch of the gritty cave floor until she sees something that makes her swear out loud in unison with Merlin in her ear – two metal panels set into the rock, each about the size of a manhole cover. She kneels at the side of one and presses her fingers hard into the covered slats striping it, but they don't budge.

"Remote controlled, perhaps?"

"Merlin," she says, quietly, calmly, "how long until high tide?"

She hears him tapping at his keyboard. "Hours yet. Galahad's going to be there long before there's anything to worry about."

"Oh, good. I magically don't feel worried at all now, stuck weaponless in a locked execution chamber."

"Do you want me to link you to Galahad so he can keep you company?"

"No, he'd only fuss." Eggsy's a strange one, as much as she loves him to death – a weird mash-up of extreme overprotectiveness and flaming rage any time someone implies that she can't do something. He needs to knock it off. "Merlin, if you don't mind I'm going to see if I feel any more alive after a nap. Not much else I can do."

"Of course." He sounds amused. They've laughed about this before, their shared ability to sleep anywhere at any time in the most uncomfortable or unlikely places. There's a rumour that one of the techs found him asleep on the toilet once with his trousers round his ankles; of course she'd never ask him about it – she can just imagine the angle of his unimpressed raised eyebrow if anybody ever did – but something about the story is strangely delightful, humanising. Merlin the menacingly softly-spoken drill sergeant who made jokes that didn't feel like jokes about murdering the families of new recruits vanished months ago, years ago. "I'll be here. I'll yell down your ear if anything changes."

He doesn't need to. Roxy, always a light sleeper, wakes to the sound of a strange gurgling rattle somewhere overhead, immediately alert as she gets to her feet. The fighting stance is habit, even though there's nobody to fight, and she turns quickly to check all around her the same way she does when she's surrounded by people and deciding which to kick in the head first.

"Merlin?"

"I'm here. What is it?"

"Listen. Can you hear – _shit_ ," she snarls, darting back from a sudden flow of water overhead, white and racing like the blast from a firehose. A second behind her starts then, hitting the ground hard and splashing over the corpse at the other side of the cave, and then a third. "Okay, Merlin, if you or any of your chaps have a plan I'm ready to hear it."

"That can't be the sea, the tide's nowhere near yet."

"No, it's fresh."

"Was that a water tower on top of the cliff?"

There's a nasty pause then, before Roxy feels compelled to go over the wall and kick it really really fucking hard.

"Lancelot. What's that going to achieve, other than a broken foot?"

"These fucking villains, I swear to god, stupid bloody pantomime Bond murder schemes! What's wrong with a nice quick gunshot to the head?"

"Show me where the water's coming from. Pipes?"

She stops kicking the wall and finds some footholds in it instead, grabbing onto protruding bits of rock overhead to haul herself up to the low ceiling for a closer look. "I don't think it's pipes, I think it's just coming down through the cliff. Why, does that make some kind of difference to the clever escape plan I know you've got...?"

He's got this way of laughing when he's not amused, a sort of exhale through the nose. Ridiculous how _breathing out_ can be a recognisable characteristic, but that's what happens when you spend most of your working life with someone's voice in your ear, unamused exhalations and all.

"Sit tight. We're thinking."

"I'm not sitting on a wet floor," she grumbles, leaning against the wall as far as she can get from the blasts of water. There's one directly opposite and one on each side, spaced evenly like she's north and they're the other points on a compass – she looks up then, wondering why there's no water from this side, and sees a dark gap in the rock above and to the side of her, which she moves quickly away from in case it decides that's the moment to start gushing water like the others. "Merlin. Look at this."

"Blocked?"

"I suppose? Wonder whether they're aware of it."

"Hopefully not. They might open the drains early if they think the place is full before it actually is."

Another nasty pause. Roxy presses her hand lightly on her stomach, willing down the nauseous flutter of panic. A bit of panic is good sometimes, sharpening the senses and letting out a handy burst of adrenaline. Not here. Not when you're trapped, when adrenaline does nothing but make you antsy.

"How long do you think before the cave fills?"

"Hard to say without knowing the exact size, or the rate of the water."

"Alright, how long until Galahad gets here?"

"About forty minutes."

"Seriously, _foot down_."

"Believe me, they're going as fast as they can."

"Okay." Okay. Shit. Okay. "Right," she adds helplessly, and goes back over to sit on her rock, knees drawn up under her chin as the puddles of water on the floor of the cave expand and start swirling together. "My kingdom for a shower head and toilet bowl."

He sort of laughs again – humourless, soft, a breath of a sound intended for no ear but hers – and then for a long time there's nothing but the roar and splash of rushing water.

Merlin's the first to break their silence. "It's filling faster than I expected."

"You could have the decency to sound at least a _little_ bit concerned." She's standing now, water level a few inches below her shoulders. Pretty soon she's going to have to start swimming if she wants to keep breathing. At least – tarnished silver lining – she's still wearing a wetsuit under her clothes from her mission, so the only part of her really feeling the cold is her hands. "Are they almost here?"

It's been ages. She waits for him to say _ten minutes_ or _they're just landing now_ , but he says quietly, "Twenty-five minutes," and a sickly rush of goosebumps creeps out across her skin.

"I suppose blowing up the gate is still as bad an idea as I thought it was before the water?"

"It's a fabulous idea, if you want to explode yourself or bring the entire cliff down on your head."

During the recruiting stage they were trained for death. At first it seemed almost funny, a bit strange, a bit silly, scare tactics to play with their heads, but one night in the dorm after lights out Piers started talking about how his mum went for therapy to get used to the reality of dying when her cancer came back the third time and suddenly everything felt horribly tangible. Roxy's been trained from the start to die in the line of duty, if that's what it comes to. She's been trained to resist torture, to make split-second decisions between survival and the mission, depending on circumstances. She's always thought she'd be alright about dying for something big and wonderful and noble, one life blinked out in order to save however many others. Not like this: alone, and pointless.

She closes her eyes and swallows, tries to sort out the raggedness of her breathing. "Merlin, there are letters to my family in the safe in my office. Combination sixty-five, seventeen, thirty-four. Will you send them for me?"

Merlin's voice in her ear is somehow louder and softer at the same time, like he's turned up the volume on his microphone to make up for the way he's speaking now in a soothing sort of murmur. "Tell me about them. Your family."

"You've read my file. You know everything about me."

"I know facts, dates, names. I don't know who they are. Tell me about—" There's a little pause, the clicking of a keyboard. "Commodore Lady Cecily Beatrice Morton."

"My mother."

"Commodore. Impressive."

"She's tremendous. She'll be promoted to rear admiral within the next few years. I'd bet my life, if it weren't about to end."

"Would Commodore Lady Cecily Beatrice Morton approve of this sort of pessimism?" That makes her laugh, shaky and wet, and Merlin's voice continues warm and soft in her ear. "Never any urge to join the Navy?"

"No. Family complications."

More clicking. "I see. Brigadier Lord Richard Evelyn Morton."

"I didn't like to choose between the Navy and the Army. I'd have compromised with the RAF if I weren't so mortally afraid of planes."

"My grandparents were pilots in World War Two, RAF and ATA. My mother was an RAF mechanic. It's not easy, is it, growing up in a military family?"

She has to start treading water to keep her head above the surface, heart lurching as the toes of her boots leave the imagined safety of the rock below. "I've never known any different. We used to write, me at Wycombe Abbey, Mum at Clyde or Portsmouth, Dad wherever he was in the world. We have this entire history of our lives in letters, all filed away in boxes in the library at home. It doesn't matter that I didn't see them very often. I never, never felt as though they weren't around. How far away is Margaret?"

"Twenty minutes."

"Will you send those letters for me?" She looks at the ceiling and then down so Merlin can see the level of the water, not quite ready to voice out loud how close to full the cave is now. "There's nothing classified, you can read them if you'd like to. I'm sure they suspect, though. My mother certainly does. She knows I'm not a tailor. She thinks I'm MI6, there's a lot of knowing glances and nose-tapping when Bond films are on at Christmas." Dying isn't the difficult part. Dying doesn't feel entirely real yet, despite the mineral stink of the water that's inches below her nostrils and rising by the minute. The difficult part is the sudden memory of hideous new fleece pyjamas from an old aunt last year, her dad singing Wizzard loudly and off-key in the kitchen as he stuffed the turkey, and her mum's warmth and perfume when Roxy burrowed under her arm on the sofa and stole one of the chocolates from the box on her lap, falling slowly asleep there to the sound of Shirley Bassey bellowing about diamonds.

"Lancelot, I'm not going to read your letters."

"But will you send them? Please, Merlin."

"Margaret and Galahad will be with you soon. You can send them yourself."

She wants to tell him there comes a point where you have to stop fooling yourself that everything's going to be okay, even if it's always been okay before, but she remembers standing in the chilly air on V-Day listening to Eggsy in her ear, the violent churn of helpless desperation in her stomach when he asked her to phone his mum to tell her he loved her. Remembers the terrible dead look dulling his eyes the time he told her about watching Harry get shot in the head four thousand miles and a gutting argument away. Surviving doesn't seem like it's that much more pleasant than dying, really.

"Merlin, what's your real name?"

She says it as a distraction, the way he's been trying to distract her from what's about to happen, the first question she thinks of. In her ear he laughs – a real laugh this time, still quiet but sharp and surprised – and says, "Now _that_ is classified."

"It can't be any worse than mine, surely. The Honourable Roxanne Cecily Gertrude Thomasina Roberta Mary Morton. My mother and all of my grandparents dragging after me everywhere I go. There's never enough boxes for my name when I have to fill out forms. I'm not even sure that's the right order. How far away is Margaret now?"

He sounds exhausted. "Seventeen minutes."

"I won't ask again."

"Lancelot—"

"Are you out on the main floor? It seems strange to die so publicly."

"No. I'm in my office, door closed."

But that's strange as well. It feels intimate; sad. "Are you alright?"

"What sort of a question is that?"

"I'm sorry." The roof of the cave slants. She didn't realise until now, water filling the opposite side to the top and only this wedge of air left. She's trying not to hyperventilate, irrationally paranoid that she'll run out of breathable air before the water displaces it and cheat herself out of the last precious few minutes. "Thank you for, you know. Everything."

"For failing?" he says bitterly.

"For trying, and for staying. God, I really need a wee."

That startles another laugh out of him. "Go. I won't tell anyone."

"Die inhaling my own piss or die desperate for one. What a choice."

"Lancelot—"

She interrupts, bracing her hands and the top of her head on the cave ceiling just above as the water bobs below her chin, chilled with panic she's stopped trying to shake off. "Merlin, will you look after Boudicca? I put Eggsy in my will but he feeds her from the table. Please, will you?"

He says, "Roxy," then, quiet and desperate, sounding as broken as a dropped wine glass, and it's so easy for her to see him in her mind when she closes her eyes: shoulders slumped the way they get when he's ploughing through far too much overtime, a creased frown, the shift in the side of his face as his jaw clenches. When he's tired he shoves his glasses up to the top of his head to rub his eyes. When he's completely bone-weary to the point of passing out over his desk he doesn't even bother going that far and only pushes them as far as his forehead. She wonders which it is now. Wonders what he's wearing. The navy cashmere jumper, or the brown, or the dark red cardigan? Wonders whether he hugs carefully, gentle and a bit reserved like Percival, or whether it's a huge enthusiastic squeeze like Eggsy's always are. The thought is a five-sense takeover, almost physical in its sudden strength: the spice of his aftershave, the tickle of knitwear against her cheek and nose, the sound of her name on his breath – her real name again, not the codename – and the smile he can't always keep from reaching his eyes even though he can control whether it shows on his mouth. And his mouth, bergamot tea and aniseed sweets, against hers, espresso and spearmints.

This is a fucking awful realisation to have at the point of death. She sort of glad it's going to die with her.

"Please. She behaves herself around cats, I promise. Please tell me you will."

"Yes, of course I will."

"Thank you. Merlin—"

"Julian Stuart," he says, rapid like ripping off a plaster, quiet like he thinks someone might be listening at the door.

"Is Stuart your middle name or surname?"

"Surname."

"Tell me your whole name."

"Julian Andrew MacKenzie Wallace Beaufort-Stuart."

"That's almost as ridiculous as mine."

"Almost," he murmurs.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, finally," Roxy says, wanting just one more of those little almost-laughs, but all she can hear is his breathing. In her pocket, her hand closes over one of the lighters. Good thing they thought to make these waterproof. "You need to close the line now or turn the volume down. I'm going to set off my lighter, I don't want to deafen you."

She hadn't been sure what to expect, an instruction not to do it, an instruction to wait. All he says is, "Are you sure?"

"Yes." Somehow it's easier now the decision is hers. It's a tiny scrambled scrap of control, but it's better than having to suck in a desperate breath of nothing but water, and maybe it'll help whichever unlucky bastard they decide to bring in here next. "Quicker than drowning."

"If you explode yourself and bring the whole cliff down we won't be able to—" He hesitates for the briefest moment, like he's searching for the right term "—retrieve you."

"Merlin," she starts, then remembers, and feels the name in her mouth for the first time. "Julian. I don't want to drown."

"Alright," he says. He sighs, a long, low, pained sort of sound, then says again, more firmly, "Alright. I'm turning the volume down to five but I'm not closing the line. I'll be here as long as you are."

"God, I wish I had some good last words. Can you make up something really brave and clever when people ask?"

"Roxy," he says again, inflected somehow like a plea or a wobbly prayer, but there's no time to listen to whatever he's stumbling to say because the water's bubbling over her nose. She holds her breath and primes one of her lighters, meaning to hold it close to her chest to take the full hit of the explosion—

—but far above her, through the gap in the rocks she'd assumed was too blocked for the rush of water, she can see _white_ , the glowing translucent sort of non-colour of sun trying to shine through a thick cluster of cloud. Moving on instinct, almost faster than thought, she shoves her arm shoulder-deep into the space and finds a crack in the rocks to wedge her lighter, turning and pushing off with all her strength from the cave ceiling and swimming down to cling to the padlocked gate. Three ways this can go, her brain tells her: she could be blown to bits, she could be crushed by dislodged falling rocks, or she might just be able to buy a few more minutes of time.

" _Yes_ , Lancelot," Merlin says in her ear, almost yells, like he's energised with hope, and then whatever he says next gets eaten up by the rumbling roar of the explosion. It's a different sort of shockwave to explosions in the air, surrounding her with heat and light and a rush of foamy bubbles and debris. She cracks her forehead hard against the bars and loses her grip, turning over and over disoriented in the water, trying desperately to avoid falling rocks and figure out which way is up at the same time as telling herself _not to breathe in_. The corpse bumps against her, rolling around in the lurch of water; she shoves it away and finally, finally finds air, heaving it in, spluttering it out.

"My god, it actually worked," she mutters, swiping blood and water out of her eyes – her glasses are gone, probably smashed, but her earpiece is still in and over the shrill screech of tinnitus she can hear Merlin swearing up a jubilant storm thousands of miles away back in Hertfordshire. "Merlin, I've lost my glasses, can you still hear me?"

"No visuals but yes, I can hear you. Margaret and Galahad's ETA is eight minutes. Have you bought yourself enough time?"

"I don't know, the water's still pumping in. The blast made quite a tall space but narrow, it's filling fast. Did you see out before my glasses went?"

"See out where?"

"I could see sky, I swear it wasn't my imagination. Where the water should have been coming." She scrambles as high as she can, racing the rapid upsurge of water, slipping on the loose rocks dumped in a precarious stack by the explosion and climbing the last few feet of wall like a spider, and looks out again: clouds, and a faraway seagull screaming as it soars across her line of vision. "It's definitely sky. I'm going to set off my last lighter and see if I can climb out."

"Lancelot, please be careful. Don't blow yourself up when help is seven minutes away."

"Seven minutes is too long. The water's at my elbows already."

He hesitates, then says decisively, "Do it. Don't swim back to the gate. You're less likely to be crushed if you stay under the ceiling at the far side of the cave."

This time she can afford a moment to reach up the gap in the rocks and find a space for the lighter before she sets it, straining to stretch as high as possible without ripping her arm from its socket entirely and then diving back down into the cave proper and counting the few seconds before the explosion rips through rock and air and water, scattering the flooded cave with chunks of broken cliff. There's a moment of panic when she thinks the rocks are going to fall in such a way that she'll be trapped back in the cave like before, but she's always been a strong swimmer and manages to make it around every obstacle and back to break the surface of the water.

Above her the air is cold and the sun is shining insipidly through the clouds.

"Did you ever read Winnie the Pooh?" Roxy asks, and Merlin, when he answers, sounds a ludicrous mixture of confused, ecstatic, exhausted.

"When I was a lad, probably. Why?"

She eyes the small gap in the rocks, the tantalising circle of freedom above. "I have a horrible feeling I'm going to get my top half out and my arse trapped."

In her ear Merlin starts laughing weakly, the closest to hysterical she's ever heard him. "As long as you can breathe."

"Eggsy'll never let me live it down."

"Five minutes. You should be able to see the chopper soon."

She wriggles her shoulders out through the gap, wincing as they're scraped raw on the ragged rocks, and heaves herself up, fingers whitening against what looks like the base of a small swimming pool, like an empty reservoir, closed door at one end covering what's presumably a channel leading from the tower. Somewhere there must be three other reservoirs whose doors are open instead and still dripping with the rush of water. Of course, stuck there with her hips trapped as she fucking _knew_ they would be, that's the moment four vicious-looking goons come running from somewhere farther down the slope to investigate the blasts and leap right into the sunken concrete pit to get at her.

"Come _on_ ," she mutters to herself, shifting painfully in place against the sharp circle of rocks that won't let her through, trying to find a decent foothold below for leverage to shove herself up. There's the strange sensation of her wetsuit giving at the side, the shocking scrape of flesh peeling and blood welling up at the curve of her hip - then suddenly she's free just in time to take a running leap at the first guy, vaulting over him with a hand on his shoulder to land right in the next guy's face, boot-first, crushing his nose back into his brain and then slamming her heel into the gurgling remains of his head when he's on the ground just to make sure. The next guy is the one who carried her into the cave and she takes a vicious sort of pleasure in the look of stupid surprise on his face and then the soft meaty _thwap_ of his balls rocketing up into his body, propelled by her knee. She steals his gun and shoots the last guy right between the eyes before he can even raise his own; then it's just her and the first guy who lent his shoulder, and she doesn't need to worry about him because he's screaming like a toddler after stumbling in the hole and somehow snapping his leg so badly that there's a chunk of bone poking out through the skin of his thigh.

"Lancelot, report."

"I'm okay. I'm out. Two dead, one trapped with a broken leg, one... I think he's alive, somehow, but he'll never breed. Orders?"

"I want to say kill them."

"I would follow that order with an almost pornographic pleasure."

Overhead there's the rattling whirr of helicopter blades and she can't hear whatever it is Merlin's saying. Eggsy, apparently too impatient to wait for Margaret to land, zips down on a line and lands heavily, yelling in pain as he unclips the cord and running lopsided to where Roxy's climbing out of the pit.

"Fucking hell, are you alright?"

She points back over her shoulder with her thumb and he shuts up, sidestepping to get a look at her handiwork then breaking out into a massive brilliant grin as he's readying his watch to shoot a dart at the one with the broken leg, who's trying to yank his gun out of a holster at his side.

"Oh yeah, good—"

" _Eggsy_ ," she says harshly, spitting the word like it's on fire, and his face drops as fast as an anchor as he raises his hands in a surrender that's only half joke. "If you 'good girl' me one more time after the day I've had I will kick a hole through your _fucking spine_."

"I was gonna say 'good work Agent Lancelot' but now I won't fucking bother, yeah?" he says, sulky and stubborn and a shitty liar, at least to her, relenting only when she flings her arms around him and thumps his back. He hugs her properly then, close and warm and slimy with a nervous sweat she knows far too well after four years in this fucking shitshow of a job.

* * *

She sleeps in the helicopter – the first time she's ever slept while flying in her life; usually she's too afraid of never waking up again, or waking in the middle of a flaming nosedive – and surfaces to Eggsy gently shaking her shoulder, and to the glow of London lights below.

"Hey, Rox? Wake up, bruv, we're almost home. Merlin says land you on your roof, ain't no point landing at HQ just to get the train back this way again."

Disappointment at not getting to see him after the shitty day they just shared blooms up, quickly killed by the thought of _a hot bath_. Merlin, even this strange new moment-of-death revelation, can't compete with that. "Alright," she says, dry and croaky with sleep til Margaret passes a water bottle back to her. "Guys, thanks for the rescue. I owe you one."

"You don't owe nothing, you rescued yourself." Eggsy's face shifts like he's trying to look annoyed, but he can't dislodge the puppy grin from his mouth. "Anyone ever tell you you're a bit fucking brilliant? As if some dickhead with a swimming pool's gonna do in the great Sir Lancelot."

That said, he still hugs her extra tight before she climbs down from the helicopter onto the roof of her building, the Houses of Parliament illuminated behind them and throwing rippling golden reflections into the dark Thames, and for once she doesn't yelp an objection or resort to hitting him to let her go; instead she clings back, just for a minute, and kisses him quickly on the jaw. "Love you, Eggs."

"Love you too. Text me tomorrow, yeah?"

She waves them off, ducking back into the shelter of the stairwell until they're just another light in the sky. Then she drags herself down to her penthouse on weary legs that, perhaps predictably, decide not to let her get any farther than the front hallway before folding beneath her til she's sitting on the floorboards with her back to the door and a wobble in her breath. Boudicca comes running from wherever she was sleeping in the apartment and shoves a wet nose right in her face. Roxy laughs, shaky and breathless.

"Hey, darling," she murmurs into warm woolly fur, slipping an arm around her until Boudicca sits as close as it's possible to be without draping herself across Roxy's lap. "Were you good for Michelle and Daisy? Hope your day was much more boring than mine."

From here she can just about reach the phone on the side table if she stretches. She doesn't even have to get up. She considers it for a little while, gently stroking her fingertips over Boudicca's head and soft ears, then goes for it and dials.

"Hi Mum," she says, and wishes she'd left it a little while longer because the ache in her throat is kind of getting in the way of her words. "Are you busy? I can call back another time."

"No, sweetheart, I can spare five minutes. Is everything okay?"

"Yes. Just, you know. Long difficult day. Wanted to hear your voice."

Her mum sounds sharper now, questioning without quite saying the words that Roxy knows she means. "Tailoring is a difficult business, I've heard."

And that makes her laugh, trembling and muffling the sound in Boudicca's fur, because yes it's fucking hard but nowhere near as hard as trying to hide facts from the smartest woman in Britain. "It's true, sometimes it's a bloody miserable nightmare. But I wouldn't change it for anything, you know? I really, really love it, Mum. Only there are some days I love it slightly less than others."

"Daddy's back in the country on leave next month. You'll come and stay a while, won't you?"

"Of course I will. I miss you both."

"How's Boudicca?"

"Climbing all over me."

"How's your love life?"

"Complicated and full of strange new revelations I don't know what to do with."

"Sounds delightfully messy."

"My life is a horrible pansexual soap opera."

Miles away in Portsmouth her mum laughs down the phone, so clear she could be standing right there in the room, and Roxy closes her eyes and pulls Boudicca even closer into the clinging circle of her arms.

"Mum, I'll let you go. I need a bath and a bottle of wine."

"The solution to all problems right there. Get some rest, sweetheart. Hope tomorrow's a better day."

"It will be. Night night."

It takes several tries to get the handset back on the hook, and several tries to force herself to her feet to go and start running a bath. She thinks, just before she drifts off to sleep in the mass of rose-scented bubbles and almost scalding water, how fucking ridiculous it would be to pass out and drown in the bathtub after everything that's happened today, but then she's gone.

* * *

Everything feels better in her oldest softest sleep shirt after two glasses of embarrassingly expensive wine, but she still can't settle and spends half an hour fidgeting on the sofa flicking through Netflix without managing to read half the titles. It's almost a relief when the phone rings, just to give her eyes a break from the monotony, then she hears Merlin's voice quietly say hello and suddenly feels more at risk of bawling than she did when she was speaking to her mum after thinking she'd never get to again.

"Merlin, whatever it is, please, _please_ can you get someone else on it just this once?"

Nothing for a few moments but the sound of his breathing. "I'm not calling you in."

"Oh. God, okay. Sorry."

"I just wanted to see how you're doing. I'm sorry if I disturbed you."

"You didn't. I'm just going round in circles on Netflix but there's nothing I want to watch."

"May I?"

She says yes, even though she doesn't know what he's asking. She's too tired for questions. The picture on her television screen vanishes then, replaced by lines of rolling code that her exhausted eyes refuse to focus on. "What are you doing?"

"Improving." The picture flickers back after a while, rows of film titles and little cover thumbnails. "You've got all countries' selections now, plus some things that technically shouldn't be on there yet."

"Well. Thank you for hacking my house, Merlin, it's very kind of you." He breathes that funny little non-laugh again, and Roxy finishes her third glass of wine to distract her mouth from asking something she'll probably regret terribly if he says no. "You're not still at work, are you? For god's sake go home, you're going to make yourself ill."

"I'm in the cab, I'm working from my tablet."

"Yours has more functionality than mine, clearly. Not fair."

"Roxy," he starts, and she interrupts.

"You've not called me Roxy since I passed the last Lancelot test, not until today."

"Well." He sounds ruffled. It's weirdly wonderful. "I don't think we've ever spoken while off-duty before. Or while one of us was, you know, about to die."

"Hm." For a moment – a long moment; it feels like forever, but can't be more than a few seconds – there's no sound on the line but breathing and the distant hum of traffic on Merlin's end. There's a curl of something in Roxy's stomach, warm and twisting and terrifying. "Merlin," she begins, then stops and corrects herself. "Julian. Where do you live?"

"Near Vauxhall Park."

"So your drive takes you across Vauxhall Bridge."

"Usually, yes."

"But it _could_ take a different bridge a little farther north."

"I suppose it could," he says cautiously.

Then the silence hangs heavy there on the line between them, questions and answers stuck tight and unspoken until Boudicca suddenly wakes up and gives Roxy such a black glare it's like she's reading her mind and is bored to tears of what she finds there. Something frees then, there's a giddy sort of lightness spreading through her, and she says it quickly before she can talk herself out of it: "Would you like to come over? You can say no. It's just, it's your fault I've got nine billion Netflix choices now. I don't even know where to start."

He sort of sounds like he might laugh, but somehow also like he's scared half to death, which is nice because that's not so different to the way she's been feeling ever since that moment just before she blew her first grenade back in the flooded cave. "You're asking me to come over and watch Netflix?"

"Yes. And, you know. Chill."

"Yes," he echoes quietly, and hangs up.

Her heart's beating like crazy by the time there's a tap on the door twenty minutes later and it's awful, it's so ridiculous. Like she's never asked anybody over before. Eggsy always takes the piss and says she needs to get a revolving door for the masses of people who go in and out of her place, as if he was any more reserved about such things before his pathetic mating dance in circles around Guinevere finally paid off. This is different. Everything about it is different. When she opens the door to let Merlin in there's a lingering moment of _what next_ , her eyes locked on his, a crooked tiny smile on his mouth, and then he folds his arms around her and everything in the world falls away but the cashmere softness of his cardigan, the gentle pull of his fingers slipping through her damp hair, a rushing thrill of goosebumps crackling through her limbs and down her spine. He's broad and tall, so tall that she's more comfortable going up on tiptoe when she winds her arms close around his shoulders and tucks her face into the warmth of his neck and the crisp collar of his shirt.

"Good to see you," she murmurs, and her fingers clutch even tighter at the back of his cardigan when he whispers in reply, a breathy little tickle against her ear, "It's really, really good to see you." There's a moment when he hesitantly starts to let go, as though he doesn't want to but wonders whether she might. When she shakes her head and clings on he breathes out slowly, hands crumpling the back of her shirt, and he finally seems to relax into it enough that by the time Roxy feels okay about loosening her grip on him, he's the one lingering.

"Not yet," he breathes against the curve of her ear, "just, please," and she sort of laughs, giddy and trembling, keeping her arms around his neck until he's ready. He releases her eventually, clinging hug becoming the warm trail of fingertips across her cheek when he cups her jaw in his hand and studies her like a book: her eyes, the blooming bruise and butterfly stitches on her forehead, her lips.

"Do you mind if we skip the Netflix part?" she asks, and Merlin's mouth and eyebrows flicker like he's trying not to smile for about half a second before he gives in to it.

"That would be a hefty 'no'."

She's grinning like Eggsy's ridiculous dog, she can feel the ache of it in her cheeks, and tells him, "Excellent," just before she leans in to press her lips softly against the thud of his pulse. He's statue-still and fever-warm until she does it again, then a faint sigh that's almost words spills from his mouth and he tilts his head for more, baring his neck. There's the prickle of salt and pepper stubble against her lips, the lingering oakmoss and cedar of whatever scent he's wearing, and the hand he's still got at the nape of her neck slides slowly down the length of her spine to just above her backside. First it simply rests there where the outward curve begins, then he draws her closer still until she's moulded to the front of him and shuddering for breath.

The press of his hands is hesitant, even now; the press of his mouth is _not_. He kisses her firm and sure and she opens to him, humming a quiet little sound of pleasure through her nose when his hands trace a double path up her body to cradle her face again and tilt it back as they navigate the height difference and twist it into something perfect. When he moves away for breath she tugs on his hand, walking backwards down the hallway to her bedroom because now he's here she can't bear to take her eyes off him for a second. She's never seen him anything like this before, never even imagined it, pink cheeks and wet mouth. His glasses are off, tucked away in his cardigan pocket or the laptop bag he dropped by the front door, and with every shirt button she unfastens down the front of his chest as they walk the heat in his eyes notches up and up until she can almost feel it prickling under her skin like the rush and shiver of goosebumps.

By the time they make it to the bed they're both half-bare, but opposite halves: Merlin's shirt and cardigan are tangled together somewhere on the carpet, while Roxy's shirt is still on but hitched up around her hips and from the waist down she's wearing nothing but her knickers. "What do you want?" he manages to ask, unclear beneath the insistent press of her kisses, and Roxy sticks her fingers in his mouth clumsily in an attempt to shut him up, breath burning ragged in her lungs at the way he raises his eyebrows in surprise and then shamelessly starts to suck.

"No talking," she insists, "all we ever do is talk."

He nods at that, hollowed cheeks morphing into a grin around her fingers before he lets them drop and starts to kiss her again: her mouth first, then the curve of her jaw, the long line of her collarbone, and the damp sweat springing up in the hollow of her throat. When his fingers find the buttons he moves lower still, a trail of gentle kisses down her breastbone as every inch of pale skin escapes from the confines of the cotton until he's got the two halves of her old blue shirt open and the point of his chin nudging at her underwear elastic.

"God," she mumbles, she can't help it, and then can't help the sudden muffled laugh when he gives her that amused raised eyebrow look again and reaches up to press his thumb against her lips. The pillows bunch up behind her head as she shifts against them, trying to twist away to bite him, but all that does is make him retaliate with a long swipe of his tongue across the front of her underwear, from the tiny ribbon bow at the front of the elastic right down to where the fabric's already damp and clinging to her. Roxy can feel the curve of his smile against her, the pointed pressure of his tongue sneaking deeper, and she whines against the press of his thumb because she can't find enough breath to say _please_. She comes far too quickly the first time, shuddering against his fingers on her face and the wet writhe of his tongue through the cotton, and chokes out a frustrated moan against his palm because it's good, it's wonderful, but it's not _enough_.

"Oh no," she pants out when he releases her chin and makes as though he's going to move up and kiss her, "you stay there, I'm not done yet," and Merlin grins like the devil, hooking his fingers into her underwear to draw the fabric down her legs and gently scratching his evening stubble against the skin inside her thigh.

"Are you sure you know what you're asking for?" he murmurs, hooking her knee over his bare shoulder.

"Are you sure you know what you're promising?" she parries back, defiant, demanding, tapping one fingertip gently just where the blonde curls of hair start to get him moving.

This time it's slower, longer, sweet as hell, nearly unbearable. By the end she's almost thrashing on the bed, slick with sweat behind the knees and inside the elbows, fingers pulling desperately at anything they can get a hold of. She makes the fitted sheet ping off the corner of the mattress and a laugh bursts free somewhere in the middle of her gasping and pleading, the motion of it trembling down her body and somehow working in tandem with the thrust and slip of Merlin's tongue to shake her onto some otherworldly plateau of whispering singing nerves that seems interminable, intolerable; then the slide of a second finger inside of her shatters her loose and she comes again with his name caught in her throat, his real name, and her hand marking frantic white fingerprints into his shoulder.

"Get up here," she tries to say, but it comes out a nonsensical slur. She finds his face with her fingers instead, sliding over his slick chin and urging him up until he's lying beside her, all messy kisses and desperate heaving breaths. His fingers are still pressed inside her, stroking her through the last few tremors, and she wants to push him away because it's too much, wants to pull his hand even deeper inside because it's _still not enough_.

"My god," Merlin's saying, a quiet sort of disbelief half-lost in her hair, neck, mouth, eyelids, everywhere he's kissing on purpose and everywhere his lips are landing by accident because she still can't quite stop squirming, "you're incredible, look at you."

" _I'm_ ," she repeats, mouth numb and tongue tingling. "I've not done anything, you are, you're, I mean, god. God, I hate being inarticulate." She drags her old Care Bear over her face, trying to sort out the broken tremble of her breathing. Somehow it's easier when she doesn't have to look at him and the fire in his eyes. "My top drawer."

"I beg your pardon?" Merlin says. There's a teasing sort of laugh in his voice and she removes the bear from her face to hit him with it.

"In my top drawer," she says more clearly. "I'm just going to climb down from the stars, give me a minute."

"My _god_ ," Merlin repeats after a moment, an entirely different tone of voice. "Who's this, then?"

She musters the energy to turn her head to the side to see what he's talking about, then kind of wishes she hadn't bothered. "Oh no. Put that back, I forgot that was there. Behind that."

"Jesus, it's like an extra limb!" He's holding it to himself, to the front of his trousers next to the hard line of his own erection still trapped behind the buttons: a fairly decent realistic approximation of a cock, veins and head and all, except it's made of lilac silicone and scattered with silver glitter.

She's trying not to laugh now, but then so is Merlin and that kind of makes it impossible. There's something so gorgeously familiar about laughing with him; it's always felt like a sort of anchor, joking through the absurdity of some of her missions and the nervy adrenaline comedown after the bleaker ones, and an irrepressible burst of fondness makes her reach for him, swiping the wet away from his lower lip with her thumb and kissing him with a tenderness she hopes he can feel. "What's the matter, does your fragile masculinity feel threatened?"

"No, I'm impressed. Or, you know, slightly terrified."

"It's not that big, is it? They have to be long, you need a bit of extra space for the harn– you know what, never mind. Put it away, bloody hell."

"Why is it _sparkling_?"

She snatches it out of his hand and throws it under the bed, then reaches into the drawer herself to find a condom. "It's not mine. Do you want to volunteer for a demonstration or do you want to put this on?"

"...The second one, please," he says, and goes very still with his hands up in mocking surrender when Roxy starts to unbutton his trousers.

He's warm in her hand, already damp and shining at the tip, and when he slides against her fingers a beautiful little pleading sound catches hoarse in his throat then comes out as a shaky sigh. His brows crease into a frown when she sucks the drip of wet from the pad of her thumb, hungrily tracking her every movement with his eyes as she tears into the condom packet and strokes the latex down his shaft.

"Suppose it's my turn to do all the work," Roxy says, smirking a bit, manhandling him into place against the headboard and swinging a leg across his thighs. His hands go straight to her hips to steady her, and his eyes don't leave hers until she's sinking down hot and shivering around the length of his cock; they stutter closed then, lashes resting dark against his cheeks until she starts to move and then they fly back open, pinning her with a stare that feels as though it's burning into her like a brand.

"Will you come again?" he asks, finally looking away but only so he can bury his face in the side of her neck and kiss her there, warm and gentle just at the tender spot below her ear. From anybody else it might sound kind of silly or a bit seedy, but there's an odd, endearing sort of curiosity in the way he looks at her when he says it and the way he's touching her now, fingertips trailing from their hold on her hips around to the swell of her arse and up to brush across the dimples at the small of her back. It's like he's mapping her, learning her, all the curves of her skin thrumming like an instrument under the glide of his hands.

"Not from this, I rarely do." That was probably a mistake, from the slow raise of his eyebrow and the considering sort of smirk he gives her then. "Sit still and behave yourself. That wasn't a challenge."

"Sounded like one."

She wriggles in his lap to distract him, lifts almost all the way off, slides back down and _down_ in strokes so long and slow they make him mumble her name somewhere in a stuttered mess of swears.

"Yes?"

"Hypothetically, if this _were_ a challenge, how would you suggest your opponent proceed?"

"Am I really doing such a bad job of this that you can still use all those long pretty words?" She rises, hands braced on his shoulders, teasing just at the head of him until he closes his fingers back around her hips and shoves her back down in a rough glorious thrust that tears a cry from her throat.

"Something like that?"

"Something like that," she agrees as his hands slide around the curve of her arse to lift her again and ease her down, a gasp and a laugh fighting one another to escape her at the same time. They find a rhythm, creaking bedsprings and clumsy kisses that are more air than touch, and she can feel the moment he finally comes as though there's no barrier between them at all: the way he goes still beneath her, the desperate hitch to his breathing, the warmth as he exhales against her collarbone, the slide and cling of his hand splayed on her naked back beneath her shirt to draw her closer to him, as if that's even possible. He slips the other hand between them, thumb rubbing tiny lazy circles just above where they're still joined, and this time when it happens her orgasm isn't something shattering like before but a perfect slow release of heat, a deep pulse of pleasure that rolls through her in waves and makes all her limbs feel numb.

"Roxy?" he says, while she's still figuring out how to lift her head off his shoulder. He sounds amused, fingers trailing up and down the indentation of her spine. "Everything alright?"

"Dead," she mumbles somewhere against his neck. "I'm dead."

After a minute Merlin says quietly, "Not on my watch," and a rippling little shiver runs through her again, one he must be able to feel; his arms settle in a loose languid curl around her waist and she feels a kiss bumped gently off the side of her head like an acknowledgement.

"That's a little more knight-in-shining-armour than I usually like," she says lightly against his ear, pressing her lips to his temple to show that it's sort of a joke, and he laughs a bit, quiet, like he knows it's sort of not.

"You understand this means I can't handle you any more?"

"Well _that's_ a crying shame." She reaches behind herself for one of his hands, drawing it up her ribcage until his long fingers are resting below her breast. He takes the initiative then, a raised-eyebrows crooked sort of grin and his thumb brushing soft across her nipple.

Later, half-asleep and warm under the covers with Merlin's arm across her grazed hip and his scratchy face catching in her hair like velcro, Roxy hesitantly asks, "How long have you wanted to?" and Merlin, with the sort of bluntness she's loved in him from the first day of Lancelot training, says, "Only about six hours. Since the seventeen minutes you didn't have."

She finds his hand in the darkness to kiss across his knuckles. "Me too."

"But longer than that, probably."

"Me too," she murmurs again, and feels the shift of his smile against her shoulder.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of minor stealth crossovers! Neither is important, you don't need to know anything about the other fandoms, I'm just amusing myself filling in background characters and info: Pelleas is Katy from the film Cockneys Vs Zombies ([fanvid](http://youtu.be/kwdkduh0mAw)), and Merlin's name is from Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein.


End file.
